Chapter 235: Ch 235: Jealousy - Part 2

Noah noticed the mark on his face as soon as he saw his reflection.

He had been hit in the face, and it had left a clear and glaring mark on his skin. Luckily, it was going to heal in a day, before Alan or Daniel could notice it.

"It’s a good thing they are out. Otherwise, I have a feeling this would have turned into something bigger than it was supposed to be."

Noah let out a sigh as he allowed his body to fall back onto the bed.

He was not surprised things had turned out like this. After all, humans were greedy and jealous by nature. And seeing Noah receive such special treatment for no reason must have pushed them past their limits.

But since they could not go to their superior and voice these complaints, they had decided to harass Noah instead.

"Ugh, I cannot fight with the kids because they don’t know anything. Still, what can I do about it now?"

There was not much he could do. Noah had to endure the jealousy and other feelings he was being subjected to because this was the path he had chosen to take.

And the harassment truly started the next day.

Noah was assigned to the research labs once more, but when he tried to get out of the elevator, it wouldn’t open. It was as if psychic powers were holding it shut. And it wouldn’t move either.

He did not panic and decided to press the emergency button.

The person who was using psychic powers did not notice this, so when someone came to check, they immediately caught the foul play.

Noah did not know what was said or what happened, but the person who had used their powers to lock him inside the elevator was not punished. At least Noah could still go to work.

The workers at the research labs were just as curious as everyone else, but they did not harass Noah to get an answer out of him.

At least, not physically.

There were just as many researchers who were pissed off about him mouthing off to the Head Researcher, and they decided to use psychological hardship instead of physical harassment to put him in his place.

Perhaps they thought he would be scared of their test subjects, but they kept asking Noah to grab this and that from the back rooms.

At first, Noah thought they were simply trying to make him run errands because they did not want him getting involved in their research, but after being sent to the back rooms several times, he began to realise that there was a pattern to their requests.

The rooms they asked him to enter were not ordinary storage rooms, and the things they wanted him to retrieve were not always equipment or research materials.

Sometimes, they would ask him to bring back samples from the testing chambers, while other times, they would send him to collect discarded equipment from rooms where the researchers conducted experiments on espers.

And each time, they would watch him closely, waiting for a reaction.

Noah could understand why they were doing this.

Since he had supposedly been assigned to the research team by Dean Reese himself, they probably assumed he had some special privileges that allowed him to avoid the unpleasant parts of their work.

By making him enter these rooms, they could see whether he was actually as inexperienced as he appeared or whether there was something about him that justified the Head Researcher’s unusual interest.

Unfortunately for them, Noah had spent more time in laboratories than any of them could imagine, and the sight of a few frightened test subjects or strange experimental equipment was hardly enough to unsettle him.

In fact, he was more concerned about the possibility of discovering something useful than he was about the researchers’ attempts to frighten him.

’If they keep sending me to places like this, I might actually find something worth investigating.’

With that thought in mind, Noah continued to do as he was told, carefully memorising the locations of the rooms he visited and paying attention to the security measures in place.

He did not linger long enough to arouse suspicion, but he made sure to look around whenever the opportunity presented itself, and he quickly noticed that some of the doors required a higher level of clearance than the others.

Unfortunately, whenever he tried to get a closer look at those doors, someone would call him back before he could discover anything useful.

It was almost as though the researchers had coordinated their efforts to keep him occupied.

’Are they deliberately keeping me away from certain areas, or am I just being paranoid?’

Noah could not decide, although he had learned long ago that it was better to be suspicious than to trust people too easily, especially when those people worked in laboratories.

By the time the afternoon arrived, he had been sent to the back rooms so many times that even the researchers seemed to be running out of excuses to make him go there.

Just as he was beginning to think that they might finally leave him alone, one of them approached him with a small container in his hands.

"Noah, could you take this to the testing chamber at the end of the corridor? The researcher in charge should still be there, so just hand it over to him."

Noah glanced at the container before looking up at the researcher, who was smiling a little too pleasantly for someone who had spent the entire day trying to make his life difficult.

"Of course."

Noah replied, accepting it without complaint.

However, the moment he turned around, he heard a faint sound coming from inside the container, followed by something that sounded suspiciously like a fingernail scraping against the lid.

Noah’s expression did not change, but his fingers tightened slightly around the container.

’Oh, this is going to be troublesome.’

He had a feeling he was falling into the research team’s trap.